European Art Gallery

The new gallery is to present, deliberately in reverse chronological order, the most interesting and best works of European painting and sculpture from the collections of the National Museum in Krakow, created between the 13th and 20th centuries.

After entering the gallery from the modernist hall of the MNK, visitors will “go back” in time, viewing older and older works. In the last room, they will see Spanish Madonnas, some of the most valuable and spectacular works from the period of Romanesque art. The second important thematic thread of the exhibition is the presentation of collectors-donors who contributed to the creation of the museum collection. The exhibition will include over a hundred works – primarily paintings – from the collections of the MNK. You will be able to admire works by such outstanding sculptors as Antonio Canova and Gustav Vigeland, as well as a number of paintings by artists who belong to the canon of world art history: Paolo Veneziano, Lorenzo Lotto, Lavinia Fontana, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Lucas Cranach the Younger, Luca Giordano, Mattia Preti, Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun and Maurice de Vlaminck.

The collection of European art at the MNK came about somewhat by accident. The institution, founded in 1879, was supposed to collect primarily works of Polish art and those related to the history of Poland, but with the reservation that it “may acquire excellent specimens of foreign art”. Works of European art that have come to the Museum over the years were gifts, usually forming part of larger legacies, including, for example, modern Polish painting or works of artistic crafts. For this very reason, the acquired set of European artistic objects of historical value is characterized by great diversity, but also by randomness.

Among the donors, we can find famous collectors and benefactors of Krakow museums, such as: Wiktor Osławski, Henryk Bukowski, Konstanty Schmidt-Ciążyński, Ferdynand Bryndza, Edmund Łoziński, Jan Matejko, Feliks “Manggha” Jasieński, etc. Some of the donors donated collections to the Museum that constituted the achievements of their lives, e.g. Erazm Barącz, whose collections were initially organized into a separate branch, or Włodzimierz Łukasiewicz, whose apartment in Lviv functioned as a private museum. The presented objects also come from collections in which European painting and sculpture were the main element. Here, it is worth mentioning Edward Goldstein, Edmund Łoziński and Mieczysław Gąsecki. In terms of numbers, the collection of Count Stanisław Ursyn-Rusiecki holds primacy. Deposits are also worthy of attention, with a special example being the deposit of the Tarnowskis from Dzików, the purchased part of which is one of the most valuable parts of the collection. Among the exhibited works, we will also find paintings from property described after the war as “abandoned”, “left behind” or “post-German”, as well as later acquisitions by the MNK, primarily from the period of the Polish People's Republic.

curatorial team: Katarzyna Płonka-Bałus, PhD, Adam Spodaryk, PhD (cooperation: Miłosz Kargol)
coordination: Katarzyna Pawłowska
arrangement design: Magdalena Bujak